Lite-On DVD Burner with Lightscribe Review

Having gone through several makers of CD and DVD drives, I chanced upon a Lite-On CD player many years ago, and have used them for replacement drives and new builds ever since. This DVD Burner with LightScribe is no disappointment. In fact, I like the drives so much, we purchased this one to replace the standard dual layer DVD burner that came with my wife's new Dell.

The switch was easy and the computer recognized it right away. The drive is an OEM which means all you are getting is the drive, no cables or hardware, but it did come with Nero 8 Essentials which gives you the LightScribe cover designer. Nero 8 was very intuitive, just design the label for the CD/DVD, then click the LightScribe icon to print the image to a LightScribe disk.

The drive both reads and burns fast and quiet. We are preprinting a stack of CD's for a Spookfest photo booth and have had no hitches and no failures. Data burning has proven to be just as reliable and efficient. We are burning a two color, (black & white) label we designed ourselves, and it looks fine on draft quality which only takes about 7 minutes. Normal and Draft times are 12 and 18 minutes respectively, but doing a two color label, the difference is not that great. If you are burning a photo or something with a wider variety of contrast, you my want to use the highest quality. (FYI: LightScribe is not a color technology, it is more of a metallic sepia with two shades).

The specs for the Lite-On DVD Burner with LightScribe, Model Number iHAS224-06, are: 2MB Cache / Write speeds: DVD+R & DVD-R: 24X / DVD+RW: 8X / DVD-R: 6X / CD-R: 48X / CDRW: 32X / DVD+R & DVD-R DL: 12X / Read Speed: DVD ROM 16X / CD ROM 48X / Black front panel / Sata Interface

The Unit cost a modest $39.99 with an $8.00 discount combo deal with a 50 pack cake box of Verbatim LightScribe disks. I have to say, that even for the short time we've owned this, we have already put it well through the paces. I am very pleased with Lite-On, in fact I think one of my CD drives in our media center is one of my original Lite-On purchases. We are now planning on getting at least one more of these Lite-On DVD Burners with LightScribe for my computer.